Monday, June 6, 2011

The Amazon Rant

It all started Friday when Bradley Sands send me a message via Goodreads, asking if I'd post my review for Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You on Amazon. This puzzled me, since I post most of my Bizarro reviews on Amazon anyway and was reasonably sure I'd done so for Rico Slade. Sure enough, I went to Amazon and it wasn't there.

I went on to look for other reviews I'd recently done and I could tell some were missing, no telling how many since it's not like I keep meticulous records. I definitely noticed Starfish Girl by Athena Villaverde wasn't showing up. I poured over the two reviews for anything that might get them rejected and reposted them. I waited and waited and they never appeared. What really sucks is that Amazon gives you no reasons for rejecting reviews, nor does it give you access to what you've written. An added wrinkle is that they MAY be using some kind of google search to see if the review is posted elsewhere. I'm guessing the way to get around that is to make just enough changes to get around it or post my Goodreads reviews on Amazon before Google gets a chance to index them.

In an experiment, I posted the two cleaned-up reviews at Barnes and Noble. They both showed up immediately. Not only that, B&N has an editor that will let you know something's not right, like the word shit that found it's way past my proofreading.

I reposted both reviews again Sunday and again this morning. For some reason, Starfish Girl is showing up now but Rico Slade is still absent.